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4 'Must Do' Money Moves to Achieve Fiscal Fitness

There are many roads to financial security, but whatever path you follow, there are some mandatory steps everyone ought to take along the way. Alexa von Tobel, founder of LearnVest.com, cuts through the thicket of advice to give us her essential keys to sound money management.

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Market Update: Dow slips to first losing week of 2012

The best route to a secure job still runs through the classroom, and droves of middle-aged Americans are following it. The proof is in the lending: The fastest growth in the student loan business is among people in their 40s. But are they making a good investment, or a bad bet?

Are women actually better at buying used cars than men? LeaseTrader, which runs a used-car marketplace for people who want to get in or out of a lease rather than buy, crunched some data and came to just that conclusion.

Chinese New Year kicked off on Monday, and the celebration of the new lunar cycle will effect you than you might think. When the country that manufactures so much of what we buy goes on vacation for two weeks, U.S. retail can hardly act like it's business as usual.

New CEO Ron Johnson's plan to revamp J.C. Penney is seriously ambitious. No more coupons, almost no more sales, and a complete rethink of the department store model. So why does he think he can pull it off -- and with a chain that has lagged its rivals? Because maybe he can. Here's why:

The U.S. economy grew at a 2.8 percent annual rate in the final three months of last year, the fastest growth in 2011. Americans spent more on cars and trucks, and companies restocked their shelves at the strongest pace in nearly two years. But growth in the October-December quarter -- and all of last year -- was held back by the biggest annual government spending cuts in four decades.

When it comes to Social Security's woes, the potential cures discussed the most are unpleasant: Raise the retirement age, reduce payments, or raise the tax rate. Fortunately, those aren't the only options.

President Barack Obama called Friday for an overhaul of the higher education financial aid system, warning that colleges and universities that fail to control spiraling tuition costs could lose federal funds.

It began quietly, as an email to 40 friends. But when a steady stream of customers began coming through the door before the family-owned Chagrin Hardware had even opened for the day on Saturday, it was clear that it had turned into much more than that. Hundreds of supporters of the family-owned business flocked to the store all day long, spending money in a veritable "Cash Mob."

GM CEO Dan Akerson is charged up about the politically manufactured controversy surrounding the Chevy Volt. "We did not engineer the car to become a political punching bag," he said. Tough words -- but rescuing the Volt's reputation will be a tough fight.

The Nike FuelBand won't hit the market for weeks, but the sultan of swoosh already knows it has a hit. The $149 high-tech wristbands sold out quickly during two short-lived online buying opportunities over the weekend. Here's what all the fuss is about.

Amazon.com may be gearing up to start charging for the unlimited video streaming service it now includes free with Amazon Prime. Sound familiar? Of course it does -- just rewind a few months to a summer that Netflix would certainly prefer to forget.

Netflix impressed skeptical investors with better-than-expected results on Wednesday night. If you want to know why the stock rallied on the news but you don't want to get your hands dirty by scouring the report, here are your answers.

The Happiest Place on Earth isn't about to become the hairiest place on Earth, but Disney is loosening up its strict appearance rules for theme park employees: For the first time, male "cast members" will be allowed to wear beards.

While the pundits debated the vices and virtues of Mitt Romney's and Newt Gingrich's tax returns, the folks at Kiplinger were scouring them for ideas that could help you. Even if you'll never have a Swiss bank account or own complex foreign assets, these dozen moves could help you lower your IRS bill.

A lot of tax talk focuses on tax brackets. But in order to get the full picture of what you hand over to Uncle Sam, you need to consider not your bracket, but your effective tax rate -- and those are two very different numbers.

On Tuesday, GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney released his tax returns, which showed he only paid about 14% of his $21.6 million income in taxes. You'll probably never have that kind of money, but you can use some of his methods to save on your own taxes.

When it comes to saving money, too many of us try to cut expenses in the short term in ways that are almost guaranteed to cost us much more down the road. On NBC's Today Show, personal finance expert Jean Chatzky talks about how to avoid seven big mistakes that fall into the category of penny wise, but dollar foolish.


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